Mad Cheese Science - Complete Paper

 Mad Cheese Science Completed Documentation

I was going through research papers I have made, over the years, printing a bunch out to be displayed at my vigil for Laurel next month (Yes, I received an actual writ to the Laurel: I'm still gobsmacked). I am minded to display my A&S work, or at least a portion, rather than any scrolls or Order medallions. I already had printed documentation for my Mad Cheese Science, but I realized that I never converted it into a web based format. Unfortunately, I'm not going to have the time, in the near future, to make that conversion. So, I will use this space to publish the like to my Academia profile, where you can read the PDF file. Just go to https://www.academia.edu/102918311/Rhyming_Cheese_Tarts to read.

Eventually, I will convert it over to this blog.

Ice Dragon 2023 part 2

After Ice Dragon report.

 
After a year of mad cheese science, it is done. The Edam Muenster has been slain. The fight was long, and we almost Adelost, but at the end, there was nothing left but de Brie. Many did not want to engage in violence but only did so for the greater Gouda. I couldn't have done it Provolone. Only three of its offspring survived, but they were captured and Feta'd in chains; they had no Chaource but to surrender. I will no longer engage in mad cheese science in Queso a new Muenster is created. This is the Whey.

It was a good day. 

My Mad Cheese Science project was entered into the Ice Dragon Grand Penthalon:

Applied Research: The overall work.
Literary Work: The main documentation and the poem that I created based on my recipe. (two entries)
Culinary Arts: Baking a butt-load of the cheese tarts.
Scribal Arts: My poem calligraphed on pergamenta in a hand similar to the hand used to write the original source.
Performance Arts: Me reciting my poem for the judges who will be standing in for the kitchen staff who might have heard the master chef recite it.

I won the categories of Applied Research, Literary Work, and Performance Arts.

And, I came in third place in the overall Pent. 

Plus, I received some great constructive criticism. From, suggestions how to make the coffins better to "You wrote your poem in rhyming couplets: did you realize that the examples are in the format of A-B-A-B-A?" 

No. No I did not. 

We live and learn.  

Ice Dragon Pent 2023

 What an over achiever does.

I have spent the last year working on what I've been calling Mad Cheese Science. But I am done with the documentation.

The last year has been a deep dive into a single recipe in a 15 century rhyming cookbook. All of this was the Ice Dragon Arts and Science Pentathalon:  a large A&S competition that haa multiple categories. The Pent portion is for people who enter five or more of the major categories. There has been a running joke, since I've been in the Barony, that someone could create a single item that is a Pent project it on itself. My Mad Cheese Science is that item. I have done the following for the following categories:

Applied Research: The overall work.

Literary Work: The main documentation and the poem that I created based on my recipe. (two entries)

Culinary Arts: Baking a butt-load of the cheese tarts.

Scribal Arts: My poem calligraphed on pergamenta in a hand similar to the hand used to write the original source.

Performance Arts: Me reciting my poem for the judges who will be standing in for the kitchen staff who might have heard the master chef recite it.

My documentation has been submitted to the Pent coordinator and I have everything printed out and ready to go, with a couple of weeks to spare. All I need to do is bake up the tarts, which I will do the week of the event, so that they don't sit too long in the fridge.

It is now in the hands of the judges (who will be reading through the main documentation prior to the event).

I will publish my documentation after the event. While I would love to win the Pent, I would love to come in 2nd place even more, since one of the things on my bucket list is to win one of my own scrolls. 

This was a fun project to do: I learned a lot, discovered a lot of new rabbit holes, and managed to get friends excited about cheese tarts. The goal is not to win; the goal is to inspire others. I hope that once the judging is complete, my research can inspire others to leap down the rabbit hole on their own journeys to something weird. 

 Rhyming Cheese Tarts

Our coffins fair for this rhyme
We must make them ahead of time.
Ingredients we need to gather ‘round:
Flour by the cup, not a pound
Sugar, half the amount, to give some flavor
Butter, melted, we’ll use it later
Saffron and water, we’ll add it to the mix
Instructions for this tasty fix:
In a bowl, flour and sugar we’ll blend
Butter, melted, we’ll add in the end
Saffron bloomed in water hot,
Two tablespoons is not a lot.
Stir it all up, until it’s a crumble
Using our hands, so that we do not fumble.
Gather the dough, form it into a ball
Flatten it out, give it a quick sprawl
Wrap it up, on the counter let it sit
Preheat the oven, let it heat until it’s fit.
Flatten it out, fit it in our tart dishes
Press it in, trim the edges, if those are your wishes
Prick the bottom, so steam can escape
Bake it up, until it’s golden and great.
Cool it down, then fill with your choice
Serve it up, hear everyone rejoice.


Filling to make our tarts
Ingredients to gather, let’s make a start:
Crush the saffron and add it to a cup
Add some water and heat it all up.
Eggs beaten without salt if you please,
Take the same volume of our basket cheese.
Half that volume of sugar fine for a sweet touch
Instructions to make these tarts tell so much:
The cheese and sugar you must grind
So that a paste is made very fine.
Add the water and saffron
To color it well anon.
In with the eggs beaten well
Mixed fine before we add them to our shells
The taste and color should be like bliss
Pour the filling into the shells, don’t be remiss
Bake it up, until the filling is set
Let it cool, then serve it, don’t fret
Enjoy these tarts, they’ll surely please
A tasty snack, with cheese, eggs, and saffron, at ease.

 More notes on Mad Cheese Science

Just some further notes on my mad cheese science experiment. This is basically to help me codify my mental notes for my next batch, so that I don't have to sort through pages of notes looking for the oven temperature I used.

I made a double batch of tarts for Baronial Investiture this weekend. I plan on foisting them on several people to get their opinions. I think that I have a winning combination of flavor and texture and I don't think I need to make any more changes. The goal was produce something that met the guidelines of the following recipe:

For flaunes.
Take new chese and grynde hit fayre,
In morter with egges, with out dysware;
Put powder þer to of sugur, I say,
Coloure hit with safrone ful wele þou may;
Put hit in cofyns þat bene fayre,
And bake hit forthe, I thee pray.

For tarts.
Take new cheese and grind it fair,
In [a] mortar with eggs, without doubt;
Put powder thereto of sugar, I say,
Color it with saffron quite well you may;
Put it in coffins that are fair,
And bake it forth, I thee pray.

And be a luxury treat for the upper crust of society. It needed to be made with ingredients found in the 15th century and could be made entirely by hand: no modern electronic devices. I think that I hit every check box on my list. 

For a batch of 40 using 2" x 1" tart pans.

Fair coffins:

2 cups of all purpose flour

1/2 cup of sugar

16 ounces salted butter, melted. 

4 tablespoons hot water with a pinch of saffron added.

I let the saffron steep for ten minutes or so while I mixed the flour and sugar together. Then I added the saffron water and the melted butter. I mixed everything together by hand until all of the flour was integrated. The dough wasn't really colored by the saffron. I guess I will need to use more, for the next batch.

Then I lubed up my tart pans with some Pam and packed the dough into the pans with my fingers. I did two batches of 20, because that is how many tart pans I have. I docked the bottom of the shells and I baked at 400F for 8 minutes, until they just started to brown. I let them cool for 15 minutes before coaxing them out of the pans. Then I loaded up the pans with the remainder of the dough and repeated the process.

This was done a couple of days before I planned on filling the shells, so I parked the shells in the fridge.

Filling:

Two beaten eggs

An equal volume of basket cheese

Half that volume of sugar.

2 tablespoons hot water with a pinch of saffron added.

I added the cheese and sugar to a zip top bag and mushed them together into a paste. I found that this method works just as well as using a mortar and pestle but faster and with less mess. And I can use the same bag and not wash another bowl. I then added the saffron water and mushed them together. Then I added the eggs and, again, mushed them together. 

Then I loaded up the shells on a baking sheet, and filled them with as much filling as would fit in each. Maybe a half tea-spoon's worth in each. I baked them at 350F for 11 or 12 minutes, until the filling had set, then let them sit on the counter for 10 minutes before touching. The ones that had their shells fall apart in the oven were disposed of in a humane fashion. 

They came out great.

More Mad Cheese Science.

 Thoughts on Pie Crusts.

Continuing experiments on what crust to use for my rhyming cheese tarts. To recap, the recipe I am working off is is from the 15th century Liber cure Cocorum:For flaunes.
Take new chese and grynde hit fayre,
In morter with egges, with out dysware;
Put powder þer to of sugur, I say,
Coloure hit with safrone ful wele þou may;
Put hit in cofyns þat bene fayre,
And bake hit forthe, I thee pray.

For tarts.
Take new cheese and grind it fair,
In [a] mortar with eggs, without doubt;
Put powder thereto of sugar, I say,
Color it with saffron quite well you may;
Put it in coffins that are fair,
And bake it forth, I thee pray.

Now, my research on "fair coffins" lead me down a rabbit hole of pie crusts. "Fair coffin" has been used for pie crusts that are on the light side; meant to be eaten rather than used solely as a casserole dish for the contents. Fortunately, there are several period recipes for coffins for me to choose from.

The Second part of the good Hus-wiues Jewell (1597)

To make fine paste. Take faire flower and wheat, & the yolkes of egges with sweet Butter, melted, mixing all these together with your hands, til it be brought dowe paste, & then make your coffins whether it be for pyes or tartes, then you may put Saffron and suger if you will have it a sweet paste, hauing respect to the true seasoning some vse to put to their paste Beefe or Mutton broth, and some Creame.

Fourme of Curye (1390)

take blank suger & ayroun & flour & make a past with a rollere

Harleian MS. 279 (1420):

.iv. Chawettys Fryidde
Take & make fayre past of flowre & water, Sugre, & Safroun, & Salt

.xiiij. Pety Pernollys.
Take fayre Floure, Safroun, Sugre, & Salt, & make þer-of past

.xx. Pety Pernauntes.—Take fayre Flowre, Sugre, Safroun, an Salt, & make þer-offe fayre past & fayre cofynges;

Harleian MS. 4016 (1450):

Pety pernantes.
Take faire floure, Sugur, Saffron̄, and salt, and make paast þer-of; then̄ make small Coffyns

Chewettes
Take and make faire paste of floure, water, saffron̄, and salt; And make rownde cofyns þere-of...

A Proper newe Booke of Cokerye (1557):

To make pyes of grene apples; make youre coffyn after this maner, take a lyttle fayre water and half a dyche of butter and a little Saffron, and sette all this upon a chafyngdyshe tyll it be hoate then temper your flower with this sayd licuor, and the whyte of two egges and also make your coffyn

A Book of Cookrye (1591):

How to bake Sparrowes or other small birds.
Make paste of fine floure, egges, butter and faire water, therof make Coffins

How to bake pyes of Calves feet.
then make your paste of fine flower with yolkes of Egges, and raise the Coffin square

How to make Chuets.
then take fine flowre, yolkes of Egs, and butter, a little quantitye of rosewater and sugar, then make little coffins

The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (1594 & 1597):

To make Paste, and to raise Coffins.
Take fine flower, and lay it on a boord, and take a certaine of yolkes of Egges as your quantitie of flower is, then take a certaine of Butter and water, and boil them together, but ye must take heed ye put not too many yolks of Egges, for if you doe, it will make it drie and not pleasant in eating: and yee must take heed ye put not in too much Butter for if you doe, it will make it so fine and so short that you cannot raise. And this paste is good to raise all maner of Coffins: Likewise if ye bake Uenison, bake it in the paste above named.

Wow. So many options to choose from. And none of the with quantities. 

Now, I am not a baker and I have never made a pie crust before. In my previous experiments I used either pre-made phyllo dough or pre-made pie crust. I have never made a pie crust before, in my life. I have watched plenty of cooking shows, but that doesn't translate to hands-on experience. So, I went looking for modern recipes to help me. I did not want to use a recipe that called for eggs, as I only had four in the house and I would need them not only for the filling, but for my breakfast the next day.  I did find a recipe on King Arthur Flour's web site for an all butter recipe. I also found some Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch recipes that call for melted butter. So, for a beginner baker, I chose to use one of the "no roll" recipes that didn't call for eggs. I just had to half the quantities on the recipes so that I wouldn't have too much dough left over.

1 cup of all-purpose flour. 

1/4 cup of sugar

8 ounces of salted butter, melted. 

I mixed the flour and sugar together while the butter was melting. I only had AP flour in the house. Once the butter was melted, I mixed it into the flour/sugar mix with a spoon until the dough came together. Then I mixed it together by hand just until I could no longer see any loose flour. I then covered the dough and let it sit for 30 minutes. 

Then I lubed up my tart pans with some Pam and packed the dough into the pans with my fingers. I had enough dough to fill 16 pans. I baked the pans at 400F for 8 minutes, until they just started to brown. They did puff up because I forgot to dock the bottoms before baking. 

I let the shells sit for 30 minutes before touching them. They did not want to come out of the pans. Two would not release at all and were broken. The rest I got to release by turning them upside down and smacking the bottom of the pans with a fork until the shell fell out. The two that broke were used for testing.

The flavor was excellent. Not too sweet and very flakey. More like a shortbread cookie than a pie crust. I bloomed some saffron in hot water while I made the filling. The new basket cheese I had bought was softer than the first batch I bought, which was good. I was able to smoosh the cheese and sugar together in a zip-top bag in a couple of minutes. 

Aside from the different cheese, I made no changes to my filling mix: One beaten egg, equal volume of cheese. Half that volume of sugar. A pinch of saffron bloomed in 2 tablespoons of hot water. All smooshed together. Then spooned into the shells. The tarts were then put back into the oven at 350F and backed for 11 minutes; the filling had puffed up and was no longer sticky. The tarts came out of the oven and allowed to cool. 

Then the hardest part of this experiment: waiting for the tarts to cool. The shells were soft and wobbly when they came out of the oven. The crust did firm up as it cooled. 

The crust is like a flakey shortbread and it just falls apart in your mouth before you even bite down. Then the crust mixes with the cheesecake-like filling providing a decadent combination of flavor and texture. We have plenty of sugary treats at our fingertips, today. This, however, would have been an experience only for the most wealthy. I don't know if the author of "Liber cure Cocorum" intended what I made, but, in the context of my experiment, I am very happy with the end result.
I might try to work the crust more to form more gluten (and dock it in the tart shells when I blind bake it), but I am inordinately pleased with how these turned out, considering that I know next to nothing about pie crusts and that this was my first attempt to make a crust from scratch.

Basically, anything I make that fits in with the original verse will be correct. I will just have to justify my decisions. I have four main goals for this project:

1) Interpret the doggerel into a working recipe. 

2) Explain why I made the choices that I did. 

3) Produce something that not only would not have been out of place on the table of a noble, but something that would be worthy of a noble's table. 
4) Go down as many rabbit holes as possible. 

Did you know that Chepying Walden, in Cambridgeshire, used to grow saffron? So much saffron that it was called Saffron Walden by 1597. Writers of the time said that English saffron was the best produced in the world. "Harrison wrote in 1577 that, 'as the Saffron of England is the most excellent of all other ... so... that [which] groeth about Saffron Walden, on the edge of Essex, sumounteth all the rest and, therefore, bareth worthily the heigher price by sixe pence or twelve pence most commonly in the pounde.'" Walden produced saffron up until the end of the 18th century. 

"Possibly the baker's bill had also run up when Thomas Baker was paid 27s 5d in December 1483.... One expensive purchase about this time was half a pound of saffron for 8s."

real price of that commodity is £272.80
labour value of that commodity is £2,519.00
income value of that commodity is £7,446.00

To put into perspective, saffron from Spain or from the Italians (who got it from North Africa or the Middle East), could cost around  30 shilling a pound. The 8 shillings Thomas the Baker paid for his half pound was a bargain. 

Mad Cheese Science

 More notes on Rhyming Cheese Tarts

Starting experiments on what cheese to use for my rhyming cheese tarts. To recap, the recipe I am working off is is from the 15th century Liber cure Cocorum:

For flaunes.
Take new chese and grynde hit fayre,
In morter with egges, with out dysware;
Put powder þer to of sugur, I say,
Coloure hit with safrone ful wele þou may;
Put hit in cofyns þat bene fayre,
And bake hit forthe, I thee pray.

For tarts.
Take new cheese and grind it fair,
In [a] mortar with eggs, without doubt;
Put powder thereto of sugar, I say,
Color it with saffron quite well you may;
Put it in coffins that are fair,
And bake it forth, I thee pray.

So, this first round of experimentation is to determine what kind of cheese to use. The recipe calls for "new" cheese. Which would exclude aged cheeses. Please read through my initial thoughts on this project for details about cheesecakes and the like. 

 So,  'Cheesecakes made of ground cheese beaten up with eggs and sugar, coloured with saffron and baked in cofyns or crusts.'  Very vague. I would conjecture that any fresh cheese could work. Aged cheese could be transported over long distances, but fresh cheeses are very local things: made and consumed within days, in the days before refrigeration. Cheeses are also very localized. Every location in the cheese making world has cheese unique to that region. So, I don't need to look for a particular brand of cheese, I just need to figure out what type of cheese to use. I decided to experiment with three types of cheeses that can be called "new". Cheese curds. "Dry" ricotta", and basket cheese. Firm,  spreadable, or soft.

For all three experiments I used one chicken egg, the equivalent volume of cheese, one teaspoon of sugar (except for the curds: see below), one pinch of saffron threads bloomed in 2 tablespoons of warm water. I also used pre-made phyllo dough shells just because I'm lazy. I mean, I used a standard, pre-made pastry shell so that all tarts would be uniform in size and would bake evenly. 

Cheese curds:

Dash's had a sale on cheese curds, so I bought a package. I microwaved the water and let the saffron bloom while the toaster oven heated up. I used my toaster oven because I was only going to be baking ten tarts at a time and the toaster would heat up faster. 

The first step was to grind the cheese curds with my mortar and pestle. This was a problem: the curds were very firm and did not want to be ground. 

I had to cut up the curds, with a knife, into small pieces so that I could turn them into a paste. This took about 15 minutes. I spent so much time trying to mash up the curds that I forgot to add any sugar. I suppose that the sugar could have helped break down the cheese. Oh well. I didn't realize this until after I had baked the tarts. I also didn't heat the water enough for the saffron, it didn't bloom very well.

I scrambled the egg and added the cheese and saffron water. Based on modern egg tart recipes, I decided to use a whole egg, rather than just the yolk or white. In addition, the recipe calls for eggs, not egg yolks or egg whites. I mixed the egg, cheese, and saffron water with a fork, then spooned the mix into ten phyllo dough shells. 

Looking at modern egg tart recipes calling for the same shells, I loaded the shells, while still frozen, and baked at 350F for 8 minutes. 

After 8 minutes the edges of the shells were brown and the filling was puffy and solid. I let them sit for five minutes before tasting. This was when I discovered that I had left out the sugar. 

The texture was nice and it tasted fine, but it wasn't a cheesecake. It was more of scrambled eggs with bits of cheese. The saffron flavor was very subtle and they turned out a pale yellow. They weren't bad, but not what I was looking for. The cheese curds were just too firm to integrate with the egg to form a cohesive filling. So, cheese curds are a no. 

"Dry" Ricotta:

For my second attempt, I made some changes in my procedure. While the cheese curds were baking, I 'nuked' two tablespoons of water for 90 seconds. Then I ground my pinch of saffron in my mortar and scrapped it into the water to bloom. (I had cleaned the mortar and pestle beforehand). This would allow the saffron longer to bloom, which should give a better result. 

After tasting and bagging the first batch of tarts, I scrambled up another egg and spooned out an equal volume of "dry" ricotta cheese. It was ricotta with all of the whey squeezed out of it. Very tasty. Two teaspoons of ricotta went into the mortar long with one teaspoon of sugar. 

While I mushed up the ricotta, it picked up all of the left over saffron powder. Scraping the cheese and sugar paste into the cup with the egg, I then added the saffron water and mixed it well. The egg and cheese integrated better, not completely, though. There were pieces of ricotta floating in the mix. And was more orange than the first batch. The hotter and longer bloom did work well.

Spooning into another ten shells, I also baked at 350F for 8 minutes. But, the filling was still goopy. I had to bake it for another 4 minutes for it to set. 

After 12 minutes, the edges of the shells were brown and the aroma of baked eggs filled my kitchen. I pulled them out and let them sit for five minutes. Five very long minutes. While I was waiting, I cleaned my utensils, ground up another pinch of saffron and let it bloom in hot water.

12 Minutes of baking did the trick. The filling was fully cooked and set. It had a better aroma and texture than the cheese curds. As to the flavor, very nice. However, the flavor of the ricotta was very pronounced. Not a bad thing, but one could definitively identify the cheese as ricotta. The strong flavor did over shadow the saffron. The sugar did sweeten the tart, almost like a mascarpone cheese, but not as sweet. Delicious, but I'm not sold on the ricotta flavor. The texture of the cheese and the ease that it mushed up was head and shoulders above the cheese curds.

Basket Cheese:

The basket cheese was firmer than the ricotta but no where near as firm as the curds. It also had a mild, fresh flavor. And with a hint of salt, something that wasn't listed in the recipe. I think that a small bit of salt would enhance the flavor of these tarts. Another egg scrambled and two tablespoons of the basket cheese went into the mortar, long with one teaspoon of sugar. 

The basket cheese took more effort to mush up than the ricotta but no where near the effort needed for the cheese curds. Like the ricotta, the basket cheese picked up the remains of the saffron. I did have to use a spoon to scrape down the sides to make sure that the cheese and sugar was well mixed. 

Cheese, sugar, and saffron water went into the mug with the egg and were well mixed. There were small pieces of cheese floating in the egg. The mixture went into ten shells and then they went into toaster oven. 

I set the timer for 12 minutes, figuring that these would take as long as the ricotta. After 12 minutes they were puffy but still a bit wet on top.

They needed another minute before they set. 

After five minute of rest, the puffiness settled down. The color is lovely.

These are the clear winner. The color is perfect. The aroma is excellent. And they taste like a cheesecake. Not as sweet or as firm as, say, a New York style cheesecake but in that ball park. The texture was as good as the ricotta, but the mild nature of the basket cheese doesn't over power the taste of the saffron. There is no hint of salt in the finished tart, but I think that it is definitely enhancing the flavor of the filling. I think I will stick with the basket cheese, as I am very happy with the result. I'll use the ricotta for a pasta dish and snack on the cheese curds.

Grinding the saffron in the mortar before letting it bloom made a big difference, as did using hotter water with a longer bloom time. The color is lovely and I like how the threads of saffron are clearly visible in the filling. Their presence and the color would show diners how decadent these tarts were. 

I do not know if scrambling the egg prior to mixing it with the cheese is the period method. If I were doing this with a stand mixer, I would add the egg to the cheese and sugar, and beat them together. Perhaps, in period, the egg was cracked into the cheese and sugar mixture and worked together by hand. I will experiment with my method, in future experiments. But, I will be sticking with the basket cheese and the whole egg: the end result was exactly what I was looking for. I don't know if I would add more sugar or not. If I plan on adding sugar to the coffin, I won't need to increase the sugar in the filling. 

 

Thoughts on rhyming cheese tarts

Liber cure Cocorum - For flaunes.

I need to write down some notes for a major research project before I start experimentation. These notes will eventually be part of an Ice Dragon Pent project. But, in the meantime, this will be a way to focus my thoughts and to avoid any extraneous rabbit holes. 

On 2/27/22, on the facey-booky, I jokingly asked Mistress Cori Ghora, who was running the Ice Dragon Pentathlon that year, if I would get bonus points if I write my documentation in iambic pentameter. She replied, "No. Unless you can document why it would have been in iambic pentameter at the time and place your entry is from."

My exact response was, "*cracks knuckles* Challenge accepted. Next year's Ice Dragon prepare to be.... not amazed. What's the word? Confused?" There were some favorable comments on this chain. After some four hours of research, I found, not iambic pentameter, but an entire cookbook in rhyming couplets. The 15th century Liber cure Cocorum 

For flaunes.
Take new chese and grynde hit fayre,
In morter with egges, with out dysware;
Put powder þer to of sugur, I say,
Coloure hit with safrone ful wele þou may;
Put hit in cofyns þat bene fayre,
And bake hit forthe, I thee pray.

For tarts.
Take new cheese and grind it fair,
In [a] mortar with eggs, without doubt;
Put powder thereto of sugar, I say,
Color it with saffron quite well you may;
Put it in coffins that are fair,
And bake it forth, I thee pray.

I might have bitten off more than I can chew. First of all, I am not a baker. Secondly, as a cookbook, the Liber Cure Cocorum is a terrible cookbook. There are no measurements. There are no details to describe what to actually do. The only thing going for me is my research skills, my ability to make logical deductions, my love for cheese, and my inability to give up a challenge. 

In discussions with Cori, Katja and other more learned cooking/baking laurels, I have decided to make this one project a complete Ice Dragon Pentathlon project (entered into five major categories). This will be a research paper, a desert, a poem (I will create my own rhyming verse recipe), a presentation of the poem, and I will calligraph the poem on a scroll of my own illumination. By then, I should be well and truly done with cheese tarts.

So, almost six months after accepting this challenge, I think I am done with the bulk of the research and I am ready to start testing my theories. 

To begin with, what is this thing. Modern translations call it a cheese tart. Tart implies a small pie. Something for one or two people. The line of "Put hit in cofyns" implies that this recipe is intended for multiple flawnes, or tarts. Coffin, singular, would have implied that this was for a single, large pie. Coffins, coupled with tarts, leads me to conclude that this is for multiple small tarts.

Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, Volume 8 (1878) gives the following: "Flawnes;" a kind of pancake was also so called. Nettleham feast at Easter is called the Flawn, possibly from Flauns having been formerly eaten at that period of the year: but see Babees Book, p. 173, where Flawnes are started to be 'Cheesecakes made of ground cheese beaten up with eggs and sugar, coloured with saffron and baked in cofyns or crusts.'" The book then gives the above recipe as one of two examples. (The other example is not a recipe.)

So. our cheese tarts should be treated as a cheesecake rather than a sweet custard or quiche. 

The next point of contention: "New" cheese. What is meant by new cheese? Unaged cheese. Cheese curds. Something like ricotta or something like mozzarella? I was thinking of using ricotta cheese as the recipe calls for saffron: the whey of the ricotta would carry the saffron. But, why would I need to grind ricotta in a mortar? It's already mushed up. As I am ready to start experimenting, I picked up some cheese curds. Cheese curds are newish. They are not aged and firm enough to need to be ground into a powder. But, I found a YouTube video of the making of a 15th Century Italian saffron cheesecake. The narrator explains that you should use a fresh, soft cheese and put it in the mortar to mash it into a homogeneous state. 

The video also covers the next point of contention: The Saffron. I was wondering how to integrate the saffron into the filling in the absence of a warm liquid. Grinding the saffron in with the frim cheese curds would flavor some of the cheese. Integrating it into the whey of a ricotta would be better; the saffron would have a liquid to step in. But this video says to bloom the saffron in a small amount of warm water. Then add the liquid into the cheese and egg mix. I have also found this method in other  redactions of medieval cheesecake recipes. 

Why saffron? It would add some nice flavor to the tart. The only ingredients are saffron, cheese, sugar, eggs, and the crust. There would be no other flavors to cover up the saffron. But, saffron was also used to color food. Other, similar, recipes say "color with saffron". So it would make more sense to bloom the saffron in warm water and let the saffron water fully color the egg and cheese mixture. 

Which leads me to the coffins. I think that since we are coloring the filling of our small tarts, we might want to show off the color of the filling. If our tarts are small, small enough to be eaten in one or two bites, then the diner might not notice the color if the tarts were completely covered. If they were open at the top, the diners would be able to see the saffron color as they were being served. Very important for the location and time period: saffron was an expensive luxury that one would want to show off. 

Also, if we assume that these are small tarts, we would want a light, edible crust to serve them in. I have always been under the impression that "coffins" were heavy dough crusts used more as a casserole dish than something to be eaten. Thick and heavy enough to survive being moved from kitchen table to the oven to the table without breaking open. But, if we are talking about a small tart, we can conclude that the crust would be light enough to be eaten without chewing away at it. So, it should be firm enough to hold the filling, but not so heavy that eating it wouldn't be a chore. I have found several redactions of period tart crusts, so I'm set there. 

Next is the egg. Modern cheesecake recipes call for whole eggs. The video of the cheesecake recipe from Registrum Coquine calls for only egg whites. The recipe for Honey and Saffron Tarts from MS Harlein 279 calls for only egg yokes. The Forme of Cury has a recipe for daryols, which is an egg custard, that calls for whole eggs. But the Libro de arte coquinaria has a daryols recipe that calls for only yokes. 

So. I will need to experiment. I have secured some frozen filo tart shells from my local grocery store. Yes, I know that filo dough is not the same as English fine coffins, but I did this out of convenience. I will need to experiment with my redaction and see what tastes best. whole eggs versus egg yolks. Cheese curds versus ricotta. Perhaps learning how to make my own cheese. 

I think that the Liber cure Cocorum is not a cook book per se. I think it was a vanity project. It wasn't intended to teach anyone how to cook something; it assumes that anyone reading it would already know how to cook, and these were just clever rhymes to amuse chefs. There is a very famous French cook book, Le Répertoire De La Cuisine, first published in 1914, that contains hundreds of dishes but no instructions on how to cook any of them. The chef was expected to know how to cook everything and the book was more of a menu suggestion than an actual cookbook. One of the "recipes" reads as follows: Marguerites - Poached and coated, half with white wine sauce, sprinkled with julienne of truffles and half shrimp sauce sprinkled with julienne of white of egg, decorated with daisies made with cooked turnips, the center or the flower made with yolk of egg. That's it.